[ubuntu-uk] Linux User Group of Glastonbury (was High Wycombe LUG)

[Sean Miller]

On 29 July 2012 11:10, Mark Fraser <mfraz74+ubuntu at gmail.com> wrote:
> I used to go to LUGOG when it was at West Camel or at Somerton when Andrew
> Waldrond was running them, but when he left and it went back to Glastonbury it
> was a bit too far for me to travel.

Indeed... it never really "went back to Glastonbury", though... it
just died, really.

I liked Andrew's concept that we were going to build our own server in
his datacentre from scratch and write a new website in php/mysql and
have that for the LUG.

Everybody involved.

But then he disappeared to somewhere in the Far East or similar, and
there was nobody really who had to passion to organise things, in the
way that Steve Leonard-Clarke had started the group at St. Dunstans
school in the early 2000s.

One of my favourite sessions in those St. Dunstans days was the
presentation by Tim Hall and the fella who wrote Rosegarden on using
Linux to produce music... that was very enlightening and, indeed, I
installed DeMudi on a machine but couldn't really get my head around
"jack" and the way things interacted and had nobody to talk to about
it really so lost interest...

Martin Wheeler's idea to do a Certification course was a good one too,
but - probably - not relevant to 75% of "Linux" users, but rather
systems administrators.  So that died.

Perhaps the key is that it's not about "Linux User Groups" but people
trying to do specific things with Linux?

> I did try to get something started with a user group in South Somerset (SSLUG)
> but that went quiet too.

I think our problem is that there simply aren't the number of people
in the area to make it sustainable unless everybody turns up every
meeting, and people have other commitments.

And the said question as to whether peoples shared interest are
actually "Linux" or whatever they are doing with it (eg. modelling or
music)?

Would, for instance, a group in Glastonbury meeting about recording
music on computers (on any platform) get more members than a group
focusing on the underlying kernel?

The key is, what does a LUG offer over and above what people can
already get on web communities?

Sean